In England, on 29 August 1840, Henry Dendy took advantage of New South Wales land sale regulations when he "paid the Commissioners for Land and Emigration £5,120 at £1 per acre, for a 'Special Survey' of eight square miles of Port Phillip land (Bate, 1983)". Unlike any other Englishman he sought his land order of 2,072 ha or 20.72 sq. km sight unseen. Professor Weston Bate's A History of Brighton describes the consternation of the squatters when Dendy arrived on 5 February 1841 to claim his land. Both Dendy and his agent J.B. Were encountered hostility and administrative problems before procuring and developing a land grant outside a five mile (8 km) radius from Melbourne in the Parish of Moorabbin, County of Bourke. Dendy later became insolvent but "the land was resold privately without being surrendered to the Crown (Public Record Office, 1991)".